Documentary Film Composer

When a documentary is deeply researched, I believe the music should reflect a similar level of thought.

This becomes particularly important with historical subjects.

If a film is taking great care with a particular period, culture or event, I want to understand the musical world surrounding it: the instruments, traditions, stylistic influences and historical context that can inform the score.

That doesn’t mean the music has to become a literal historical reconstruction.

It means that when we depart from history, we should understand what we are departing from.

A fantasy film can sometimes invent its musical world almost completely.

A detailed historical documentary may ask the composer to begin with research.

The deeper the scholarship of the film, the more seriously I want to take the scholarship behind the music.

Documentaries can require radically different musical scales.

Some are primarily informational. Interviews, narration, archival material, facts and detailed explanation carry the film. In those situations, music may spend much of its time beneath the surface.

Others contain extraordinary cinematography, dramatic visual sequences and larger emotional arcs.

Those films may sometimes support a score much closer in scale to what we associate with a narrative feature.

The distinction shouldn’t come from the label “documentary.”

It should come from the film.

The images, storytelling, subject matter and density of information tell us how much musical space is actually available.

Dialogue changes orchestration.

When someone is speaking, I don’t want the score competing for the same space.

That means thinking about more than volume.

I listen to the speaker’s register and the spectral space occupied by the dialogue. From there, instrumentation, register, density and orchestration can be shaped around the voice rather than against it.

If a prominent instrument occupies a similar register and tonal space as the speaker, it can begin competing for the audience’s attention even when the music isn’t particularly loud.

Sometimes the solution is to move the musical material into another register.

Sometimes it is to simplify the orchestration.

Sometimes it means removing the exposed solo instrument entirely.

Under sustained narration or interviews, I also tend to be cautious with excessive motion. Slower-moving textures, restrained dynamics and carefully chosen colors can allow the music to contribute emotion without continually asking the audience to notice it.

There is an interesting exception.

When a documentary is presenting a substantial amount of factual information—dates, maps, charts, historical developments or explanatory narration—music can sometimes become more active.

Used intelligently, it can help organize information.

A change in musical color can signal a transition in subject.

A subtle punctuation can draw attention to an important development.

A shift in momentum can help re-engage the audience during a section that might otherwise become cognitively dense.

The objective isn’t to make facts artificially dramatic.

It is to help the film maintain movement while the audience is processing them.

This is one of the places where documentary music can perform an almost structural role.

An interview is different.

When a real person is describing something meaningful, their face, voice, pauses and imperfections may already contain everything the scene needs.

Music has to earn its place.

When I do score underneath an interview, I generally want the music to remain restrained enough that the speaker continues to dominate the experience.

That might mean soft strings, a subtle ensemble, electronics or another rounded texture rather than an exposed solo voice.

It often means less rhythmic activity.

And as the subject changes, the music can change with it—sometimes almost imperceptibly.

A slight shift in harmony, texture or intensity can help follow the emotional structure of the conversation without turning the interview into a performance by the score.

Documentary music can be extremely emotional.

But because we are often watching real people and real events, I generally begin from a slightly more restrained position than I might in a fictional dramatic scene.

The music should not have to manufacture importance that isn’t present in the material.

It should reveal, support or deepen what is already there.

There are certainly moments when a documentary earns a large emotional score.

There are also moments when the most respectful musical decision is to stay almost completely out of the way.

That judgment is one of the things I find most interesting about nonfiction scoring.

A documentary does not become more cinematic simply because it contains more music.

Often the opposite is true.

If music plays continuously, the audience gradually stops experiencing its entrance as meaningful.

Silence creates contrast.

It gives interviews room to breathe.

It allows difficult material to exist without commentary.

And it gives the score greater significance when it finally returns.

That is why spotting matters so much.

Before deciding what the music should be, we should also decide where the film does not need it.

Documentary music is often required to be restrained.

That should not be confused with being interchangeable.

A quiet cue can still contain a distinctive musical idea.

A sparse texture can still be beautifully orchestrated.

A restrained theme can still carry meaning across an entire film.

One of the weaknesses I sometimes hear in documentary scoring is music that has approximately the correct emotional tone but very little musical identity.

There may be many notes, constant underscore and competent textures without a central idea that feels particular to the film.

I would rather have fewer ideas with greater meaning.

The music can remain subtle and still be compositionally serious.

The audience may not consciously identify why one score feels more cinematic than another.

But they hear the difference.

The quality of the recording, performances, mockups, orchestration and mix all contribute to how seriously the music is perceived.

This doesn’t mean every documentary requires a large orchestra.

Often a single excellent musician can add more humanity than a much larger synthetic arrangement.

The important question is where real performance will make the greatest difference.

A documentary with limited recording resources can still sound exceptional if those resources are concentrated intelligently.

I believe strongly in thematic writing for documentaries.

A documentary still has an argument, perspective or central idea.

It may have people, places, relationships, historical periods or concepts that return throughout the film.

Music can help connect those elements.

A theme doesn’t always need to arrive as a complete melody.

It can begin as a fragment.

It can change instrumentation as the film moves between subjects.

It can become more complete as the audience’s understanding of the story develops.

That gives the score something deeper than continuity of style.

It gives the film a musical memory.

Historical documentaries are particularly interesting to me because the research can become part of the composition.

Before writing, I want to understand the instruments associated with the period, the musical language surrounding it and the cultural influences that may be relevant.

The goal isn’t simply to collect historically appropriate sounds.

It is to absorb enough of that world that those elements can be woven intelligently into a modern film score.

That was an important part of my work on Lew Wallace: Shiloh Soldier, Ben-Hur Bard.

The documentary moved through the Civil War, Wallace’s life as an author and statesman, his time in the Ottoman Empire, his family life and other distinct chapters.

The score therefore needed multiple musical worlds while still feeling like one film.

Research into period instruments and Civil War musical traditions helped establish the vocabulary. Themes could then move through that vocabulary and develop across the story.

The Testimony presented a very different challenge.

Directed by Vanessa Block, the 28-minute documentary chronicles the Minova Trial in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and focuses on the experiences and resilience of women affected by the violence.

Steve Tisch was among the film’s producers, and I composed the original score.

The film was later selected as one of ten documentary shorts on the shortlist for the 88th Academy Awards.

The subject demanded restraint.

Much of the film deals with testimony, interviews and real experiences that did not need music to manufacture their emotional weight.

At the same time, the film contains expansive cinematography and larger visual sequences that could support a much more cinematic musical scale.

That contrast became central to the score.

One of the creative questions on The Testimony was how much the score should reflect the film’s African setting.

I wanted that influence to be present.

I did not want it to become a collection of predictable musical signals.

The solution was subtlety.

Elements of the setting could influence the musical language without requiring every cue to announce where the film took place.

The larger objective was still to write a cohesive cinematic score that belonged specifically to this story.

That distinction matters whenever a film involves a strong cultural or historical identity.

Research and influence should deepen the score.

They shouldn’t reduce a place or culture to musical shorthand.

The score for The Testimony could move between very different levels of intensity.

For intimate material, the texture could become extremely small—sometimes as exposed as a pair of violas.

When the cinematography and larger ideas of the film opened outward, the musical scale could expand with them.

That allowed the score to remain respectful around testimony while still giving the documentary a broader cinematic identity.

It is a principle I return to frequently:

The size of the music should respond to the size of the moment.

Not the size of the production.

Face of a Nation created another kind of documentary challenge.

The film moves through architecture, international exhibitions, family, history and larger ideas about American ambition and participation in the World’s Fair tradition.

The score therefore needed considerable variety without becoming a collection of unrelated musical styles.

Orchestra became the foundation.

Different instrumental colors could then help distinguish locations, subjects and emotional environments while recurring musical ideas maintained continuity.

That ability to change musical vocabulary without losing the identity of the score is especially valuable in documentaries, where the subject can move rapidly between very different worlds.

A strong documentary score needs many of the same things as a strong narrative score:

Musical ideas.

Themes.

Taste.

Excellent production.

A clear relationship with the director.

And an understanding of what the film is trying to say.

The difference is often one of judgment.

How much should the music tell us?

How much should it simply support?

When should it help organize information?

When can it become cinematic?

When should it disappear?

Those decisions are as important as the notes themselves.